Confident Networking

Confident Networking is a project that Gael has developed in conjunction with her husband Stuart.

The springboard for the project is the book, ‘Confident Networking for Career Success’ originally published in 2005, and updated in 2010.

What exactly is Confident Career Networking

A career or business network is simply a web of relationships that have the potential to be mutually helpful and mutually trusting. They provide opportunities to build long-term social relationships between colleagues, clients and competitors both locally and across the globe. When networking, our aim is to build a sense of mutual trust with the people in our network. Informal socializing and the sharing of both personal and work-related information helps us to get to know people in a deeper way than just the brief communication exchanges we may be able to have with them in the course of our normal working lives. This trust and deepened knowledge of each other enables us to help each other more effectively to grow and develop our business or career.

A strong network also functions as insurance against a rainy day. When you are a member of one or more, you know that there will always be someone there to advise and support you through the tough times.

Sounds great to you?

Hopefully your answer is “yes” though we meet very many people who go on to say ”’ …but I dread networking. I know I should do it but I hate it and never feel at ease so I put it off over and over again.”

We understand that handling these kinds of work connected social relationships can be really hard. This is particularly true of face-to-face meetings. Is it any wonder that many network relationships nowadays start and often remain on the web? Although this is a very practical and useful this way of meeting and keeping in contact with people is, it has limitations in relation to building the level of dependable trust career and business networking often needs. And, it is face-to-face networking that most of our clients find tests their confidence. We are frequently asked for help in handling tricky personal interactions such as breaking the ice with strangers, saying a respectful “no” to certain people or maintaining appropriate conversational boundaries.

In our experience, we also find that many people have misguided ideas about confidence in relation to networking. They mistakenly think that the best networkers and those who are natural extroverts brimming with charm and charisma. The reality is that the shyer introvert, who may prefer one-to-one interactions, can be just as successful at networking. We believe that trust is best established when people are genuinely being themselves.